Selfless CC0 public domain challenge -- let's try this :)

In today's highly competitive and self-centered world of terms, conditions, laws and restrictions, let's try to be different at least for a little while. For fun, new experience and the benefit of us all.

What is this?

This is a challenge that states this:

During the next month, create an original work and share it under Creative Common Zero (CC0), public domain dedication license.

This is a challenge to create something, even very small, completely with the goal to help everyone, without any self interest and limiting conditions. This doesn't mean you won't get any reward for your work -- people may choose to reward you, you will get a good feeling -- but this isn't the goal, the motivation, nor an obstacle to your creativity.

Please feel free to copy-paste or reshare this on other social media!

How?

Create something original (see the note below) of any nature, quality and scale. Bonus points for providing source files/code or using free as in freedom software for this! The work can be:
- a picture,
- photo,
- video,
- piece of music,
- sound recording,
- computer program,
- 3D model,
- literary work
- or anything similar :)
Share it in an appropriate place on the Internet under the CC0 waiver (please do not use other waivers or licenses, they may be ineffective or incompatible). This means you'll give up your copyright and allow anyone to use your work in any way without any conditions, putting your work into the public domain. You can share your work e.g. at (don't forget to select CC0 during the upload!):
- Wikimedia Commons, likely the biggest sharing place of free cultural works,
- OpenGameArt, game related art,
- Freesound, sound samples,
- Internet Archive,
- Blendswap, 3D models,
- Gitlab, computer code,
- Flickr and other sites supporting CC0 licensing,
- even places like Youtube can be used, but some of them may complicate sharing e.g. by prohibiting downloading in their terms and conditions, so try to prefer the above :)
- or other fitting place.
You're now encouraged to let others know and share your work on social media using the #cc0challenge hashtag :)

IMPORTANT NOTE

The work you create has to be original and NOT contain any material owned by someone else, so you e.g. CANNOT create a Harry Potter picture or a cover of a Beatles song, but you MAY use a work that is already in the public domain, e.g. a Mozart's composition or something someone else shared on the Internet under CC0.

The copyright rules are complex and often even determining if something is owned by someone is very difficult. If unsure about whether you can use something, rather go with your own work, or ask more experienced people.

FAQ

Why?

Free culture is already a niché topic that needs more supporters, and even within this community I feel like CC0 and public domain often gets lost in the shadow of attribution and sharealike licensing. I have personally tried all kinds of free sharing and eventually arrived at using CC0 exclusively. I don't want to force it, but want people to try it and decide for themselves what limitations they feel are really necessary to impose on their works. Licenses such as CC-BY-SA are widely used -- I simply want you to try CC0 too, and then decide what worked the best. Besides this, with this challenge we can also:

do something good,
conduct a personal experiment: try CC0 and see what it results in -- perhaps it will become a hobby, perhaps you'll find you'll really rather stick with CC-BY-SA etc.,
find a motivation to simply create something,
in the process promote public domain and related topics, such as free culture.

How exactly do I share my work under CC0?

This is easy, you must only clearly state that your work is released under CC0 or attach the waiver to the work somehow -- simply let others know you use this waiver for this work. This can be as easy as stating "I release this work under CC0." in the description of your work. However, it is best if you:

Provide the licensing information as clearly as possible, i.e. attach also a link to the waiver text (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) and state its full name and version (CC0 1.0 Universal).
Attach full text of the waiver to the work if possible (e.g. put it in the archive you distribute the work in).
Provide and ideally archive the proof that you've really used this license. This is often solved simply by uploading the work to a well established site, such as Wikimedia Commons, and selecting CC0 as a license.

Don't forget that in order for your work to be put in the public domain it mustn't contain any material owned by someone else!

What do I get from this?

You'll get exactly as much as you give others, since the work you create can be used by anyone, including yourself. And, of course, you'll also get a good feeling of a selfless act and a new experience :)

Even CC0 can be used for self interest goals, but the point of this challenge is to not focus on self interest and see what it feels like and what it results in to simply share something with the sole intent to help others.

Shouldn't I at least require credit or "personal use only" for my work?

There exist licenses for this and you can do this, but not in this challenge. I am not implying it is bad, just that it is very often unnecessary, and would like you to simply reevaluate when it is necessary to impose these condition. The point of this experiment is to try to impose NO restrictions at all and see what happens.

Personally I have found that I mostly get credit even if I don't require it -- people simply do it even if no one forces them to. With CC0 you can still say you'll appreciate credit, you just give up the right to sue someone for not crediting you.

Personal/non-commercial licenses exist too but in the end they impose a very big restriction (since commercial/personal use are very vaguely defined) and such works aren't even considered free cultural works. If you impose this restriction, people will never know exactly what they can do and may easily get discouraged to use your work.

But can't my work be abused?

Firstly this depends on what you mean by abuse, but indeed, other people may in theory make money from your work or use it in a way you wouldn't support. This however doesn't always have to be wrong and may in fact lead to very good things, just as unrestricted sharing of knowledge in science leads to many good things. Indeed it can also lead to things you will perceive as wrong.

But you can only find out by actually trying it. Through this challenge you can make a small experiment in which you can see what this trust, and power, you give others can lead to. You give others the power, and also the responsibility over something you create. From the result you can then decide whether it was a good decision and whether you want to continue in this type of sharing or not in the future.

Don't be afraid, this is already working -- many people are already sharing millions of works under CC0, including very great ones, such as these: